Negative Rates and Patches of Trouble for Japanese Insurers

​The newfangled world of negative interest rates has hamstrung life insurers. That ​is, by now, a well-established fact.

So when the boss of Japan’s largest life-insurer by assets, Nippon Life, says subzero rates are eroding earnings, that shouldn’t come as a surprise. It is, perhaps, more of an alibi for the menacing realities that began bubbling under the surface before negative rates came to be.

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